Letters to the Editor
Quiet Type
Published Letters: 655 Editor's Choice: 32
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We, the Patients of the United States
[Read the article: Dianne Feinstein, symbol of the worthless Beltway Democrat]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There is an article in today's New York Times about how nursing home care is deteriorating while profits climb, and lawsuits that might otherwise discourage negligence and unnecessary deaths are now too difficult to conduct. The reason? No one can determine the ownership of these facilities. Private investment forms have gobbled up these money-makers and figured out how to protect themselves with a maze of perfectly legal ownership structures and layers of obfuscation. Patients die of ridiculous things like infected bedsores, and too bad.
Sounds just like what's going on here, too. "Not my fault, I didn't know." Everybody's got just a little piece of ownership in this war, and even if we could punish an owner here and there, it wouldn't make a dent. There is just too much green, green money to be made.
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Economic realities
[Read the article: I resent my fiancé because he is rich]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]LW, maybe what's making you mad is that your guy is possibly a poser, or worse yet, obnoxiously cheap. IF he has lots of money at his disposal (and as others have pointed out, that's IF), what's he doing pretending he's a paycheck to paycheck type?
Maybe you're seeing him as obsessive or stingy, now that you "know" he has money.
But find out if he REALLY has (his own) money, and quick -- because two people getting married should just plain know each other's financial realities and agree about how to proceed with them. Unless, of course, you want a REAL reason to be miserable once your marriage kicks in.
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Rovin'
[Read the article: White House: Obama too "intellectually lazy" to work here]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm guessing the quoted senior official is the ostensibly unemployed Karl Rove, as both Bush and Cheney are way too charming and intellectually rigorous to come up with that phrase.
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The silent pain
[Read the article: The light's on, but is anybody home?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The ultimate question for me always comes down to this: Can the allegedly non-conscious, non-responsive person nevertheless feel pain within the depths of his own body? I can't help but believe he does, and even if a doctor does not, how can we not err on the side of doing no more harm? The idea that we can put a patient through the horrific pain of starvation and thirst, wash our hands of it and call it care takes my breath away.
As the huge baby boom population ages and more and more of us are sure to wind up in this limbo state, somebody has got to ask the question: When will we mercifully allow hopeless but possibly agonized patients to pass humanely, in the way that we allow our pets to?
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$9.11, made out to MoveOn
[Read the article: Why stop at $9.11 when you could ask for $911?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I was reading another thread where two posters said they were sending $9.11 to MoveOn instead. What a great way to hijack Rudy's groaner idea and do some good with it!
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Swilldog, thanks for the Onion link:
[Read the article: Why stop at $9.11 when you could ask for $911?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yep, he's running for "President of 9/11," all right. I just had to post this nugget from the Onion article:
Giuliani supporters praised the candidate for his "early and unwavering commitment" to 9/11.
"People talk about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, but did either of them happen to be mayor of New York in September 2001?" Bedford, NH resident Helen Rolfe said. "Guiliani was. To me, that speaks volumes about this man."
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O'Reillys Field Trip
[Read the article: Bill O'Reilly explains the African-American]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Every sentence that spills out of O'Reilly's mouth is pure comedy gold. I think I like this one the best:
"They all watch 'The Factor.'"
LMAO!!
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Sorry to say this doesn't bother me one whit.
[Read the article: Playing hardball: The Clinton campaign vs. GQ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Bush gets Fox; Clinton gets GQ. Seems fair enough. (I mean fair and balanced enough.)
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To FredRated:
[Read the article: Playing hardball: The Clinton campaign vs. GQ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]GQ should run with the Hillary story, since they're so very much more concerned with Truth and America than a glam trip to Africa. I'd be okay with that, too.
Meanwhile, I'll go to The Onion, Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart for actual news analysis.
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SUV Mystery
[Read the article: Win or lose, the UAW is doomed]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I wonder if someone on this thread can explain to me the Great SUV Mystery. How in the world did Detroit sell monstrously-oversized vehicles to one, two and three-person households throughout America? I live in the city, I navigate my Corolla within parades of these houses on wheels. I go to the suburbs, same thing, only doubly.
I'm aware of the obvious smart marketing -- selling imagined status and "adventure" and alleged superior safety (I have not seen any real evidence of this), but how did such a truly huge number of Americans buy into this? Seriously, how can so many of us be so dumb?
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Attach a box to his back.
[Read the article: A non-di-nahy-uhl di-nahy-uhl]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In all fairness, the tv news people reading their teleprompters rely on phonetics, too. I've thrown phonetics into speeches I've written for others, to keep the public speaking trip-ups to a minimum.
But in ALL fairness, our president is pathetic in every sense of the word, so this pre-emptive attempt to keep a lid on his illiteracy saves us all a bit of embarrassment.
But anyone ever notice how obvious he makes it when he's reading phonetics, with that little hesitation followed by his goofy defiant eye contact? I swear it's like watching an 8-year-old up in front of the class.
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@had_enough
[Read the article: Win or lose, the UAW is doomed]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thanks for the link to the Gladwell article about our reptilian attraction to SUVs. Fascinating how the instincts surrounding fear and safety can be so (literally) off-base.
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The many faces of clean.
[Read the article: Men on eHarmony seem obsessed with women who are "clean"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Keeping in mind that eHarmony skews pretty heavily conservative/Christian (or does it? maybe I'm wrong, but even so), I'm thinking that "not clean" might be being interpreted several different ways.
Some guys may mean showered. But some may be referring to general housekeeping (i.e., I don't want to live with a slob). Some may mean "clean" as in drug-free, or STD-free, or oral sex-free, or just plain squeakily clean-living.
"Clean" to committed Christians also can mean adhering closely to the values of Christianity -- straight-arrow honesty, following Jesus' ways, etc.
So the more I'm thinking about this, the more I'm thinking eHarmony needs to re-tool this part of the questionnaire. And I'm also thinking that if any of these guys strike you as otherwise interesting, it could be worth you contacting them just to ask what they mean by clean. Maybe.
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Lost opportunity
[Read the article: John Edwards' Katrina contest]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Guiliani's marketing folks blew it. The prize should be 9 minutes and 11 seconds at the site, the approximate amount of time I understand Giuliani himself may have spent there.